"He locked both front tyres and flatspotted them, and our metrics showed that it was pretty severe damage to the tyres, which harmed his performance at the end," Wolff said.

"It was a bit of a stressful moment, but he kept it together.

"You could see the pace was still good enough. Sector one was obviously very good, but in sector two he was able to fight back and there was the odd tenth he lost. But on the next lap around he was good."

Bottas explained that the lock-up happened as temperatures began to drop in his front tyres, and the moment briefly took him out of his comfort zone.